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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (40867)	9/1/2007 10:54:03 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541299

The screwy thing about the housing bailout is that we wouldn't do it for any other product. If 2 million people bought high-end sports cars on bad loans, would we be saying oh dear, we can't let those people lose their cars, poor things.......we'd say they never should have been in those vehicles in the first place. Repo the cars and get the buyers back in cars they can afford or on the bus. Or high-end plasma TVs - would we step in to make sure people can keep an essential item like a TV if it's way over their heads and cheaper alternatives are available? The odds that a family can afford $1200 rent are better than a house that should carry a $3000 mortgage in a normal fixed-term loan. The market was stupid to let this bubble happen. But it won't be gone until the market does its thing and washes out the pain and the crap. Pols from both parties moaning that unqualified people should stay in houses they never should have been in to begin with, it's absurd. But very few pols will stand up and say that.

To: JohnM who wrote (40867)	9/2/2007 2:23:03 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541299

John; At least 2 million foreclosures tied to the sub-prime meltdown are now expected; the administration's plan should provide refinancing options to, at the most, less than a fourth of them by the end of next year. This might be a lot worse than first blush. We have determined a newer means of determining who is subprime and who is not. The creditworthiness of some as determined by their credit scores may be way off the mark - IMO. Haven't seen this talked about but one of the best ways of getting your credit score way up there was to have just a ton of credit but pay on time. The more money you borrowed - the higher your score - so the more money you could borrow. Any opinion? steve